Best Bands of the 00s

[Dr. Drum]

ndy said:

It's completely forgettable.

ndy said:

and a massive let down from their previous effort. My last.fm account tells me that I listened to that album at least 13 times on my computer alone, and yet I can't remember a single track outside of "superconnected". Just one big blurry mess of a clusterfuck album.

ndy said:

note: i don't really feel this strongly about bss. i just want to get riley's blood stirring a bit.

Well done and sadly all true. Staunch defenders of BSS will admit this as soon as they come up with something that truly is the measure of YFIIP.

Stars, people, Stars. Tunes will back me up on this.

[riley]

ndy said:

note: i don't really feel this strongly about bss. i just want to get riley's blood stirring a bit.

Making this dirty hippie cry won't change the fact that Broken Social Scene are the best band on the 00's.

I invested a lot of time in their last album. A lot of time. It's still not YFIIP, granted, and it's sloppy to the point of being frustrating in spots, but it's still a solid and interesting piece of work.

I like bands that borrow someone's sound and fuck with it, but most of us like bands who create something fresh. That whole concept is getting harder and harder.

I love Interpol for instance, and find the Joy Division comparisons a bit of a stretch other than having cool basslines and a baritone vocalist. Fact remains, they still sound familiar. Broken Social Scene don't sound like anyone. At least no one you can easily pin down. They sound like Broken Social Scene. That's pretty cool.

[tuneschick]

docdrum said:

Stars, people, Stars. Tunes will back me up on this.

Yes. Yes I will.

In fairness, I'm really trying with BSS. But I think I made a mistake in buying the s/t instead of YFIIP, because it's just really not clicking for me at all. I keep thinking that I should play it again, but I'm just not that interested right now. I can't explain it. I can't understand how a band that everybody loves (and not in a mainstream-hear-them-on-the-radio-every-two-minutes way, but in a people-on-here-who's-music-tastes-I-trust-quite-implicitly way) is just so completely failing to win me over. So I'm going to keep trying, but...

[riley]

Tunes have you heard anything from You Forgot It In People?

[Fuzznuts]

I actually think I like the self-titled better, but just by a hair.

[tuneschick]

rileydog said:

Tunes have you heard anything from You Forgot It In People?

Couple of tracks... but the only one that really stands out for me off the top of my head is Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl because I really quite disliked it. A lot.

[Fuzznuts]

And Stars is damn good, too. Damn good.

[riley]

I would get behind Stars, but their whole body of work jsut doesn't hit the same level of brilliance as Set Yourself On Fire. Heart and Nightsongs are both very good, but they catch a band getting their footing where you can clearly see their capability, but them being the best would be solely based (for me anyway) on Set Yourself On Fire.

Broken Social Scene started getting traction as KC Accidental, so even by the time Feel Good Lost came out, they were putting out some solid tracks. Still spotty perhaps, but completely fresh and already on the mark. You Forgot It In People simply propelled them into the big time.

I love Stars to pieces, but for my money they sit nicely alongside The Housemartins, The Smiths, or The Trash Can Sinatras, but they're not breaking nearly as much ground as BSS.

[riley]

tuneschick said:

rileydog said:

Tunes have you heard anything from You Forgot It In People?

Couple of tracks... but the only one that really stands out for me off the top of my head is Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl because I really quite disliked it. A lot.

Have you heard "Cause = Time" or "Stars & Sons"?

[tuneschick]

Don't think so. Though I think Cause = Time was the track Steve really liked, and he's not a BSS fan either.

[Ryosuke]

docdrum said:

Stars, people, Stars. Tunes will back me up on this.

I'd back you up too, if not for the fact that Set Yourself On Fire is the only Stars album I've heard. I think that might actually be the only one that's out over here, further proof that you fucking Canucks need to do a better job promoting your music in Japan. Also, I missed out on responding to this from another thread (City's Best Band) but I might as well do it here since we're talking about Stars:

luke said:

In fact, on the Stars theme, I put [Supercar's "Lucky"] down on the Now Playing board not too long ago and said, "Imagine Stars in Japanese, half a decade earlier" or something.

Good, good, good call on the Stars/early Supercar comparisons, luke. I'd never noticed it before, but now that you mention it, yeah, the similarities are pretty striking, even up to the fact that both bands feature a guy singer and a girl singer (who sometimes exchange vocals within the same song). Hell, what is "Ageless Beauty" if not a Supercar song sung in English? I might have to give the edge to Set Yourself On Fire over Three Out Change though, but that's not really Supercar's best album, and the comparisons start to not make sense after they evolve away from that sound.

Great 3 have released three quality albums this decade (May And December, When You Were A Beauty, Climax).

[Dr. Drum]

While in one sense you definitely have to say 'more power' to BSS for running with it, with BSS I think they basically lost control of the thing. Take any given track, or at least the less successful ones, and there's just so much crammed on there that it all starts to lose coherence and flow. They needed to learn to pull back and subtract, and I know in some cases they purposely didn't do that, but it just didn't always pan out.

As for this:

rileydog said:

I love Stars to pieces, but for my money they sit nicely alongside The Housemartins, The Smiths, or The Trash Can Sinatras, but they're not breaking nearly as much ground as BSS.

You know, ultimately I'm not sure BSS is, in fact, really breaking all that much new ground. Which is fine – to paraphrase Eno, pop music can just as legitimately be about reevaluation if a band invests it with some kind of new energy and creates its own space, which BSS obviously do.

These guys are picking up an old ’60s hippie thing where they’re all onstage together as a big community and they play tunes. So it has a perfect resonance. Their timing is perfect right now. They’re not doing anything new or different, ultimately, they’re just celebrating that old community vibe that we worshipped in the hippie era". –Dave Newfeld

As for Stars, I started out like Riley seeing Nightsongs and Heart sitting clearly in the shadow of Set Yourself On Fire, but now I see them all of a piece. SYOF is still obviously their best album but there's a sublimity, in the true sense of the word, that exudes from everything they do (including EPs, live radio appearances, everything). Sets them totally apart for me right now.

New one, btw, Do You Trust Your Friends?, apparently slated for release later this year. Can't wait!

ryosuke said:

I'd back you up too, if not for the fact that Set Yourself On Fire is the only Stars album I've heard.

We'll see if we can't do something about this, Ryo.

[riley]

Esthetically I don't think BSS are doing anything too monumental per se. Fair enough. Sonically however, I can't recall ever hearing quite the same natural homogeneous mix of genres and styles into something so unique. It's how they meld sounds and styles, not simply the fact that they do. Lots of bands flaunt how easily they transcend styles, but it's typically forced and show boat driven.

I see their style as more akin to say Wilco, who start who solid pop signatures then turn the songs on their heads, occasionally to the point where they're tough to interpret. Pavement were master of the same domain.

As for Stars Doc, I agree there's a thread that ties the three discs together, not unlike The Weakerthans trilogy. For me the difference is still the wow factor. Stars make me think "wow I haven't heard anyone do that so well in a long long time. BSS make me think "wow I haven't heard anyone do anything quite that way before".

Clear and telling none the less that the two bands share so many common players and elements though isn't it? If we're going to split hairs, it's kind of cool to do it among artists who are all part of the same collective.

[Kensterberg]

rileydog said:

I would get behind Stars, but their whole body of work jsut doesn't hit the same level of brilliance as Set Yourself On Fire. Heart and Nightsongs are both very good, but they catch a band getting their footing where you can clearly see their capability, but them being the best would be solely based (for me anyway) on Set Yourself On Fire.

Broken Social Scene started getting traction as KC Accidental, so even by the time Feel Good Lost came out, they were putting out some solid tracks. Still spotty perhaps, but completely fresh and already on the mark. You Forgot It In People simply propelled them into the big time.

I love Stars to pieces, but for my money they sit nicely alongside The Housemartins, The Smiths, or The Trash Can Sinatras, but they're not breaking nearly as much ground as BSS.

This post, esp. that last paragraph, makes me really curious about Stars ... while I don't like the Smiths, I almost invariably like bands that are compared to them, and I love Housemartins (and like the Trash Can Sinatras tracks I've heard, "Obscurity Knocks" was theirs, right?), so this is beginning to sound like a can't-miss recommendation to me!

[Kensterberg]

And Riley, for having this coherent and good natured musical discussion, you've earned yourself a POTD. Don't forget to pick up your prize over on that board ...